★★★★☆Find the book here! Having come home to see my parents for the weekend I was delighted to find that I had a package waiting for me. I couldn’t remember having ordered anything so I was happily surprised to find that I had been chosen to review “The Dark Heroine: Dinner with a Vampire” by Abigail Gibbs. I can now say that I have a highly regarded respect for the author of this book because she is living the dream. Only being 18 years of age, she is already a published author with a following of several million both on and offline and is also studying at Oxford University. She shows that age is just a number and true talent can spark at any point in life.

With regards to the publication in question, I started reading it at 7:30pm last night and finished it at 4:30am in the morning. I was truly entranced by the lexical whimsy and sarcasm of Violet Lee and her strong feminine character. It has been a while since I have read a vampire novel that has portrayed women as strong and independent. Despite her compromising situation, she stays headstrong and for those who have checked out “Canse12” on Wattpad (Abigail’s pseudonym) then you will know that both Gibbs and Violet are vegetarian. I thought it was interesting to see the author’s personality come through in such a strong component of life and this was really reflected in the character. I would be interested to meet Abigail Gibbs and discuss if any other characters have quirks that are also personal ones.

I was intrigued by the short and snappy chapters; constantly reminding myself that this book was written with a multitude of exams and other school work that a 15 year old has to deal with and being only a half a year older than the author I can empathise with her busy lifestyle. I thought the short chapters complimented the book’s narrative and the second perspective we gain when Kaspar’s point of view is introduced really locks the readers fascination with the unknown about the protagonists.

The plots all weave together neatly towards the climax of the book and leave us open to a multitude of sequels that I am dying to read. With regards to her treatment of Vampire Lore, I think she has created an interesting twist by having some of the traditional expectations but also extending them with a creative touch.

I think this book feels very much like an introduction of what could be a fantastic series and I’m almost bereft at the thought that “Autumn Rose”, book 2 of the series, will not be published til at least next year. I hope to get the chance to review that book too.

Finally, I would like to congratulate Abigail again on doing what I hope to in the future and being able to study all at the same time!

Novel Progress

It’s a bizarre experience to look back at your own work from years previous. I’m sure many writers would agree with the statements I’m about to make. In this case, I started writing a novel in 2010, as part of National Novel Writing Month, and have recently found the time to continue it. I’ve tried several times to continue writing, but I found that I had to concentrate on exams, essays and other deadlines and just didn’t have the time to really commit to working on it. So I decided that while I’m working and I don’t have any University work to do, I would set aside some time to work on it.

I quickly realised that after having such a limited amount of contact with the novel that some of the finer details had escaped my memory so I decided I would re-read what I’d currently written. This was when I realised that the current 19-year-old me and and the then 17-year-old me, had totally different writing styles. So I would have to edit the whole thing before I could even begin to write any further.

This is currently the stage where I’m at with regards to progress, as you can see at the top of this blog. My aim in relation to how my blog will relate to my writing is to update either once or twice a week on my progress and give you guys a bit of information about characters and some snippets of prose too, when I’m feeling generous.

One of the first things that I found that will need some severe hacking and re-wording was my love of run-on sentences and I will endeavour to fix them all within the first draft. It’s mostly odd because, even though I know no-one will read it until I let them, while reading certain parts, I’m almost embarrassed by my writing. I would still say in no way are my grammar and spelling perfect or near that, but I can say with confidence that my progression in the two aspects have improved since I was 17. So its almost like I don’t recognise my own writing at some points.

Another thing I discovered when reading through is that some parts didn’t make complete sense. What I mean to say is that I made sense when I wrote it, though looking back it doesn’t. Meaning that I’m either missing something as my current-self or my then-self just forgot that conveying meaning through writing is an essential skill for a writer. Here’s an example; I started a paragraph with,

“Now I had no idea what would happen,”

then two lines later, referring to the same thing, had written this;

“trust me, I know what happens.”

The whole thing just confused me. So I deleted it. It wasn’t intrinsic, so I felt a slight cleansing feeling as my finger fixed itself to the backspace button.

So, I will update again with Novel Notions on the 20th if not before, it will depend on my progress. Keep you eye out though because I will be adding some Character Bios and hopefully the Prologue so you can get a sneaky preview of the Novel. Since I realise that I’ve not actually told you anything about it then it should be quite the opening to the world of my writing.